Syria

• Divisions among the opposition should not be used to as cover for inaction by the international community, Khalid Saleh, an executive member of the Syrian National Council told the Guardian (see 10.24am).

• The Turkish military say they have located the bodies of the F-4 pilots who were shot down over the Mediterranean by Syrian forces last month (see 1.34pm).

• Turkish firefighters are tackling several forest fires which have reportedly spread over the border from Syria (see 3.11pm).

• The town of Izzaz close to the Turkish border has been under increasing bombardment from tanks and helicopters for six days, Turkish journalist Memet Aksakal reports, saying that he fears a massacre is about to take place (see 4.46pm).

• Bashar al-Assad has accused Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of involvement in the violence in Syria by giving support to the rebels. In the second part of his interview with the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet, Assad also attacked the Turkish leader as a hypocrite. Meanwhile, the Turkish foreign minister accused Assad of lying.

• The UN's suspended monitoring mission in Syria will resume only when the violence decreases, said the head of mission general General Robert Mood (see 12.11pm).

Bahrain

• The Bahraini government is lobbying for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council's advisory committee. Raza Kazim of the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission urged other countries to block the bid because of Bahrain's "appalling human rights record". (see 9.25am).

Palestinian territories

Libya

• Libyans living abroad have started voting in embassies and consulates in six countries, Canada, Dubai, Germany, Jordan, the UK and the USA, the Libya Herald reports.

4.46pm:Syria/Turkey: The town of Izzaz close to the Turkish border has been under increasing bombardment from tanks and helicopters for six days, Turkish journalist Memet Aksakal reports from the nearby border town of Killis, in Turkey.

At the moment when we look from the border we see black smoke rising from the town. We see sometimes helicopters but mostly it is being shelled by tanks.

Many people from the town are trying to escape, but they are scared to get out of their houses. So far 24 houses have been damaged by bombing. Yesterday we heard 10 children have been killed.

Yesterday and also today, helicopters were attacking.

I think there is a danger of a new massacre [in Izzaz]. It is on the main road from Turkey to Aleppo, but on both sides of the town the roads are block. People can't get out to escape. If Syria attacks strongly, it maybe a really big new massacre. But so far it doesn't look like Turkey will do anything [to stop it]. The situation is very serious there. The Free Syrian Army is controlling the city, and many of them are to the north of the Syria. There are some Syrian military inside the town, and they can't get out.

Turkish jets have been scrambled to the east and west of the area, but not near Izzaz itself, Memet said.

Turkish jets don't allow Syrian helicopters come within four miles of the border, he said.

The proximity of the smoke from shelling suggests that any buffer zone inside Syria does not extend as far as four miles. He said: "Maybe they don't allow helicopters to come that close, but tanks are definitely shelling much closer than four miles [from the border]."

The border crossing is deserted, and its unclear whether the Syrian army is in charge of the crossing point. "But most of the Izzaz area is controlled by rebels," he said

More Turkish troops and equipment have been deployed to the border area in the last week. "Turkey is just taking measures in case rebels come close to the border. It doesn't look like Turkey is preparing to attack Syria," Memet said.

The fire is reported to have started near Kesab in Syria and spread to east to Yayladagi in Turkey.

3.34pm:Tunisia: A commission charged with drafting new media laws has resigned, citing the lack of government will to create the institutions for a free press, AP reports.

The National Authority to Reform Information and Communication was tasked with writing new laws to regulate print and broadcast media in March 2011, replacing those of the deposed dictatorship.

The commission presented its laws in November. It said in Tuesday's statement that they have been ignored by the Islamist government elected in October.It says that in the ensuing vacuum, the media scene has been invaded by outlets that ignore existing laws while the government arbitrarily appoints the heads of state media companies, just like the previous regime.

The commission says there was no valid reason to continue its mission.

A Syrian general from an engineering division defected to the opposition rebels and fled to Turkey on Wednesday, bringing the number of such top ranking officers given refuge on Turkish soil to 16, Free Syrian Army officials said.

Turkey now hosts some 250 officers who have defected to the FSA in its southern Hatay province and helps them with logistical support, though Ankara denies providing them weapons.

It did not name the officer. Meanwhile, the FSA has released what it claims to be footage of Shia officer, it named as Mazen Fawaz, announcing his defection.

2.58pm:Syria/Turkey: Turkish firefighters are battling several blazes along the border, according to an update from AP.

Mehmet Harbi, a forestry official, claimed the fires were "deliberately started" at four different points on the Syrian side of the border and spread to Turkey due to strong winds.

Turkey's state-run TRT television said Syrian forces are believed to have started the fires to deny shelter to rebels along the border area. Harbi and TRT provided no evidence to substantiate their claims.

A Turkish helicopter also was fighting Wednesday's blazes, and an Associated Press reporter in the border town of Yayladagi said loudspeakers were used to call all males between the ages of 15 and 55 to help fight the fires.

The Turkish Forestry Directorate has reported that more than 100 directorate workers and firemen have been trying to extinguish the fire. Officials added that they have deployed a helicopter to help fight the blaze, but that as a consequence of windy weather and the unwillingness of Syrian officials to help they are having some difficulty in containing the fire.

2.18pm:Syria: After the fracas in Egypt, there are renewed calls for the Syrian opposition to unite. But would that necessarily be a good idea? Some on Twitter think not.

@Doylech unification will make the opposition more mediocre than it is because positions will be watered down by consensus.

Syria

• Bashar al-Assad has accused Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of involvement in the violence in Syria, by giving support to the rebels. In the second part of his interview with the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet Assad also attacked the Turkish leader as a hypocrite.

• Divisions among the opposition should not be used to as cover for inaction by the international community, Khalid Saleh, an executive member of the Syrian National Council told the Guardian. He admitted that the opposition had a big challenge to overcome differences on the details of a transition government after an opposition conference in Cairo ended in walkouts, fights, and a lack of agreement (see 10.24am).

• The UN's suspended monitoring mission in Syria will resume only when the violence decreases, said the head of mission general General Robert Mood. He also declined to end speculation about his own future as head of the mission, by stating that this was a matter for the security council (see 12.11pm).

• Turkey's foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Syria's opposition should accept the idea of a transitional government agreed on the suggestion of international envoy Kofi Annan. He also accused Assad of lying by claiming that Syria had no idea that the jet it shot down last month was Turkish.

Bahrain

• The Bahraini government is lobbying for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council's advisory committee. Raza Kazim of the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission urged other countries to block the bid because of Bahrain's "appalling human rights record". (see 9.25am).

Most of the second part of the interview involves a personal attack against Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister.

Assad said of Erdogan.

He had an agenda wider than the Syrian issue. It concerns his personal position and the position of his team. He wanted the terrorists to have a free hand in Syria, that they shouldn't be arrested or imprisoned, and that we do not defend ourselves ...

Erdogan is shedding the tears of hypocrites for the Syrian people. Why hasn't he cried for those killed in some Gulf countries, although they are innocent, peaceful and unarmed? Why isn't he speaking about democracy in some Gulf countries?

He also declined to end speculation about his own future as head of the mission, by stating that this was a matter for the security council.

"We are reviewing this [suspension] on a daily basis and immediately the conditions on the ground allow ... we will resume the mandated task," he said.

<
p>After meeting officials from the Syrian government, Mood said he "received from the government a very clear commitment on the six point [peace] plan." He did not elaborate.

He described last weekend's talks in Geneva as "difficult", and added: "There is this feeling that [there is] too much talk in nice hotels and too little action to move forward and stop the violence."

Asked if he was planning to resign, Mood smiled and then said: "The individuals in this mission and the mission itself has a mandated period that expires on the 20 July. We are all in this mission to serve the welfare of the Syrian people with all of our energies. What happens after the 20 July is for the security council to decide."

Rather than convert Mood's observer mission into an armed peacekeeping mission, as some had proposed, now Secretary General Ban Ki-moon intends to downgrade it to a "political mission" led by a civilians, even smaller than the current 300 person UNSMIS.

To some this seems like throwing in the towel. A more cynical view is that some in the West and Gulf want things to get worse in Syria, either to justify further arming the rebels, or to intervene.

11.52am:Syria/Turkey: Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu has disputed President Assad's claim that the Syrian forces "did not have the slightest idea" about the identity of the warplane that they shot down over the Mediterranean, Today's Zaman reports.

"He is definitely lying. Either the Syrian air defence systems are not as robust as he claims or what he says is a blunt lie," Davutoglu said in remarks published in the Vatan daily on Wednesday. He also insisted that Turkey had records indicating that the Syrian forces did identify the plane before shooting it down.

Turkey has insisted that the plane's electronic signals, which indicate if an aircraft is friend or foe, were activated during the entire flight and that Turkey intercepted radio communications in which Syrian forces referred to the plane. The Syrian forces referred to the plane using the Turkish word for "neighbour" in an intercepted radio conversation, according to a report published last week in the Turkish media ...

Responding to Assad's statement that the Turkish plane was using a corridor used by Israeli planes in the past, Davutoglu said: "Is there a corridor in Syrian airspace that belongs to the Israeli planes? If this is what he means … then he admits that Syrian airspace is constantly violated by Israel. And if Israel is constantly violating Syrian airspace, how come no Israeli plane has been fired at?"

11.32am:Yemen: The internationally-backed "transition" plan which resulted in the removal of President Saleh last February has often been touted as a model for the way forward in Syria. However, the latest report from the International Crisis Group highlights a lot of shortcomings.

The nation essentially has witnessed a political game of musical chairs, one elite faction swapping places with the other but remaining at loggerheads ...

The settlement failed to resolve the highly personalised conflict between Saleh and his family on the one hand, and General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, as well as the powerful al-Ahmar family, on the other ...

Likewise, the underlying political economy of corruption has remained virtually untouched. The same families retain control of most of the country's resources while relying on patronage networks and dominating decision-making in the government, military and political parties.

For frustrated independent activists, the struggle at the top amounts to little more than a political see-saw between two camps that have dominated the country for some 33 years ...

The army is still divided, with warring commanders escaping the president's full authority. Armed factions and tribal groups loyal to Saleh, Ali Mohsen or the al-Ahmars remain in the capital; elsewhere the situation is far worse.

<
p>It purports to show a colonel from the first armoured division from Houla, Homs. As usual the footage cannot be independently verified, but once again it does show a close-up of the man's identity card.

In his paper on the mounting pressure facing the Syrian army, the Washington Institute's Jeffrey White says it is facing a stream of defections.

But he also notes:

Some factors are still working to maintain military cohesion. Both the army and the regime retain the loyalty of Alawite personnel, very few of whom are known to have defected. Loyalty to the regime is a factor among soldiers of other persuasions as well, whether based on personal commitment or benefits in the form of position, privileges, or pay. Others fear the consequences of regime change or desertion and are therefore more motivated to remain united. In addition, because the war is not yet definitively lost, many soldiers - especially those with a stake in the regime - may still believe Assad will win.

10.35am:Syria/Turkey: Bashar al-Assad has accused Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of involvement in the violence in Syria, by giving support to the rebels.

In the second part of his interview with the Turkish daily CumhuriyetAssad also accused the Turkish leader of being "two-faced" by pursuing a sectarian agenda in the region and trying to persuade Damascus to introduce political reforms while ignoring the killings and democratic shortfalls in Gulf Arab states.

With his desire from the beginning to interfere in our internal affairs, unfortunately, in the subsequent period he has made Turkey a party to all the bloody acts in Syria. Turkey has given all kinds of logistical support to the terrorists killing our people.

If you go and ask Erdogan now, again he will say 'reform'. However, if he was sincere he would have said the things he is saying now during our meetings in 2004. Now he is talking about all these reforms. There is a double standard here, a two-facedness."

By crying for the Syrian people in a two-faced manner, why isn't he also crying for those dying in the Gulf countries? Why isn't he interfering in those countries' problems with democracy?

p>He claimed that one of main positive outcomes of the conference was backing from the grass roots movements for the SNC. But some groups are refusing to accept the SNC as the umbrella organisation for the opposition.

"It is difficult. Syria is multi-ethnic country ... The Kurds wanted something specific about them. But that would open the door to too many things in a national pact," he said.

The grass roots activist group, the Syrian Revolution General Commission walked out because they felt there was an attempt at meeting to undermine the SNC, Saleh claimed.

He also said "great support" was expressed for the rebel Free Syrian Army during the meeting.

Saleh said the SNC was looking to this Friday's meeting of the Friends of Syria group to hear clear signals of support from the international community for the Syrian uprising.

The international community has a moral duty to show support for the Syrian people ....

It almost impossible to try and bring different opposition parties [together] and tell them to agree on the details. There is not a single united opposition movement in the whole world.

The international community is sometimes using the disunited opposition card to just cover up their inability to take hard decisions.

9.25am:Bahrain: The government is lobbying for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council's advisory committee when elections are held in September, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

A letter from Bahrain proposing its "entirely qualified" nominee, Saeed Mohammed al-Faihani, has been sent to the 57 member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation seeking their support. The letter was circulated by Pakistan in its capacity as the OIC's coordinator.

Letters to the UN endorsing the Gulf kingdom's candidate have also been provided by Bahrain's National Institution for Human Rights and several local government-approved human rights organisations.

The move is seen as an attempt to clean up Bahrain's image and also to give it influence in human rights discussions at the UN.

It's disgraceful that such a country with an appalling human rights record should be on the human rights advisory committee. We ask the UN and other countries around the world to reject Bahrain's application.

Countries with human rights abuses should not be allowed to use the United Nations Human Rights Council to wash away their crimes.

We will be launching a campaign to ensure that Bahrain is not allowed on the UN human rights advisory committee. To allow them a seat is to undermine the very notion of human rights. The leaked documents, exclusively obtained by IHRC, show that there needs to be more work done within the OIC on the issue of human rights, rather than promoting the application of a human rights violator.

The advisory committee acts as a thinktank for the UN Human Rights Council and its 18 elected members are regarded as "experts". Four seats will become vacant in September.

Current members include several from countries with a poor human rights record, among them China and Azerbaijan.

9.10am:Syria: The Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa, who escaped from Homs earlier this year, claims the destruction of the city is now worse than what he witnessed last year in the Libyan port of Misrata, which was besieged for months by Gaddafi's forces.

Andrew Harper, the UN refugee agency's representative to Jordan, told AP: "We will have to do something pretty soon, because we've had 1,000 people arrive [Monday] night. Over the past four days, the numbers have doubled every night."

If the army cannot address these challenges, it will likely collapse, though precisely when is difficult to determine. The end could come in a rush or, more likely, through gradual disintegration.

Improving the Free Syrian Army's planning, intelligence, combat, and command-and-control capabilities would presumably speed this process even further. The endgame in Syria is likely to be messy and violent in any case, but accelerating the regime's fall could limit some of the damage. Beefing up the FSA's capacity would also put it a better position to deal with the post-Assad transition. Much of the regime will be swept away if the army breaks, and the opposition must have something ready to replace it.

Palestinian territories

Tests reveal that Arafat's final personal belongings – his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh – contained abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element. Those personal effects, which were analyzed at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, were variously stained with Arafat's blood, sweat, saliva and urine. The tests carried out on those samples suggested that there was a high level of polonium inside his body when he died.

Foreigners like me are not likely to be able to detect subtler efforts to influence the voting by militias and political parties, and in any event we can cover only a few of the many polling places, none of which are in the most insecure areas. But there are also local observers–both "party agents" and civil society representatives–who are far more likely to detect abuses. Hopefully the presence of internationals flying the banners of EU, the Arab League and The Carter Center will give courage to these local observers. The international presence should also encourage local election boards to try to execute their responsibilities in accordance with the elaborate procedures hurriedly put into effect. The High National Election Commission has issued more than 100 directives.

Why do we, and the Libyans, go to all this trouble? The answer is deceptively simple: legitimacy.